Attic Treasures

I've been saying for several years that I need help to clean our attic. A lot of things have been stashed in there that should have been thrown out right away. We can do our children a favor by throwing out our junk ourselves instead of leaving it for them to clean out someday. Some of the things were too big for me to drag out without help. But it is too hot to work in there in the summer, too cold in the winter, and the spring and fall seasons kept passing by.
I guess Leroy got tired of hearing about it and finally was motivated to help. We did not have a Saturday available so we started working on it evenings last week. One thing that was in our favor is that our attic is limited to crawl space behind the walls of the upstairs bedrooms. I can't imagine how it would have looked if we had a full attic.

We worked on the one side of the attic two evenings and it began looking a lot better. I kept the home fires burning to get rid of as much as I could that way. There is still a non-working air conditioner and computer piled right inside the door waiting to go to the recycling place when I have a free Saturday. I told myself this is what happens when you live in the same house for 43 years with a man who can't bear to throw anything away. But if sitting in the attic for 20 or 30 years didn't fix it, I don't expect another ten or fifteen years will do any more good.
Last night we finished cleaning that half of the attic. The things that were left have more sentimental value and there wasn't as much to throw out. I brought two boxes down to go through and clean up. We had a lot of fun just looking through the stuff last night. I found my old diary from 1964, some of Leroy's pay stubs from the early 60s when he worked for $1.25 hr., the letters and cards we sent each other when we were dating, and lots of other interesting things. I brought the letters down to read and see if we should leave them for our posterity or let our secrets die with us. :-)
The most pleasant surprise I had was opening an old fruitcake tin and finding a pair of glass perfume bottles that always set on my mother's dresser. We did not find them when we emptied Mom's house for estate sale and I always wondered what had become of them. They were in my attic all these years? When did they leave Mom's dresser and get mixed into my things? I have no idea but it probably happened before I was married.

I don't know the dollar value of these old perfume bottles but I believe Mom got them before she was married in 1944. The only marking on them is on the bottom where it says, "Made in Occupied Japan." That identifies them as WWII era. But they are not for sale (unless my siblings want to contest my right to have them and schedule a family auction). Finding them in time for this weekend is my Mother's Day comfort and connection to Mom.